Biography of Gustave A. StrandHumboldt County, CA Biographies

GUSTAVE ADOLPH STRAND. - The city engineer of Eureka is a representative of that remarkable class of native
sons of California, who without advantages other than those they made for themselves have risen to prominence and
become factors in the permanent upbuilding of their commonwealth. All of his life has been passed in the west and,
while still a young man, already he has had the supervision of some notable pieces of engineering work that tested
and proved his scientific accuracy and professional skill. Realizing the inestimable value of thorough preparatory
instruction, he endeavored to secure the best technical advantages the state afforded and he left no effort unmade
that would lay broad and deep the foundation of his occupative knowledge. The common schools of San Francisco (in
which city he was born November 11, 1887) gave him preliminary training in the customary branches, while his special
training was had in the Vander Naillen Engineering School of Oakland and the engineering department of the University
of California at Berkeley. At the expiration of two years of study in the university he was equipped with sufficient
knowledge to permit of practical work and from that time to the present he has been identified with important projects
calling for engineering skill and proficiency.

The twenty thousand acres in the San Joaquin valley known as the Patterson irrigation project was the first large
enterprise to engage the attention of Mr. Strand, who became an engineer there in 1908 and continued for two years
in the prosecution of that important work. When he first came to Eureka in 1910 it was for the purpose of engaging
in construction work on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad then in process of building. Most important was the contract
he filled for the construction of four miles of the road from Camp Grant to McCann's Mills as well as the building
of the Thompson Bluff tunnel on the same road. He was also in charge of the opening of Jacoby creek quarries, and
furnished the rock for building the United States government jetties at the entrance to Humboldt Bay. Meanwhile
he served as city engineer of Fortuna for one year. In June of 1913 he was elected city engineer of Eureka by a
majority of thirteen hundred, the large vote in his favor attesting his personal popularity as well as the general
confidence in his engineering efficiency. Socially he and his wife (who was Miss Lydia Atkeson, a native of Trinity
county) have a host of warm personal friends among the people of Humboldt county, to whom their fine traits of
character have endeared them. So intense has been his devotion to engineering and so fully occupied his time with
the filling of contracts and the making of estimates that he has had little leisure for political activities and
he has no fraternal connections aside from membership in the Modern Woodmen of America and the Improved Order of
Red Men.

From:
History of Humboldt County, California
With a Biographical Sketches
History by Leigh H. Irving
Historic Record Company
Los Angeles, California 1915